And now, after eight years, people are saying I am the greatest President in history. I’m not saying I am, but I must be, because of the people. The people have spoken, so very many people.

Who wouldn’t say it? With my friend Vladimir Putin, I ended the threat of Radical Islamic Terrorism. Spent a lot of nukes between us. Now show me a Radical Islamic Terrorist. You can’t. There aren’t any. Very few refugees. Still, some bordering countries are complaining about fallout. Frankly, the Ukraine, Spain, Greece and Italy were already disasters. Niger, Nigeria, how were we supposed to keep them straight? Who names a country Chad? Those are not serious countries.

Still, we are sending aid. The Toby Keith Getwell Tour. And Amazon Prime will be available for a special one-dollar introductory rate.

I know some of you were disappointed. I mean, blow up the Middle East and no Armageddon! But I held up my end of the deal. God had my number. He didn’t show. End of story.

America is safer since we started charging admission. You’ve seen the lines of foreigners waiting for tickets. Huge crowds. But well-behaved. Very respectful. Concessions through the roof. Money that went to smugglers now flows directly to the states.

Come on—focus, pick one color, one message, then license the hell out of it.

Take our national parks. Record-breaking attendance with the rebranding, with the partnerships. The Trump-Washington Monument. The gilding done at no cost to the public, I might add, thanks to the outpouring of gold ingots from patriots who, frankly, don’t need to hoard any more.

And Krylon Arches. All that sandstone, so boring. Now the whole family can commemorate their visit.

All these regulations and bureaucracy to prevent people from doing what they want.

Jeff Sessions said let’s crack down on this legal marijuana. I said, that’s lot of very unhappy people, Jeff. How about we end patent protection on prescription drugs. In exchange, we give big pharma the weed, the heroin, the meth. Don’t even tax it, keep prices low and drive the criminals out of business. There’s your Trumpcare care. Genius.

They said I couldn’t lower taxes. It was so simple. Free market, no regulation, no subsidies. Dump Agriculture, Energy, Health, Transportation, Education, Health and Human Services. The industries were ecstatic. Put them in charge.

For the rest of the Cabinet, sponsorship agreements. Lockheed Martin Defense, Exxon Mobil State and Goldman Sachs Treasury.

I abolished the IRS. Today, no one in America pays taxes except The New York Times, Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center. And Mitt Romney. He should apologize.

And the courts, streamlined. Let the police do their job. All you need, honestly, is bankruptcy court. No more frivolous lawsuits, these terrible decisions, these activist—I’m not saying they’re Mexican or whatever—judges. Just don’t appoint any new ones. Downsize by attrition.

I stole the idea from Mitch McConnell. Smart man, small thinker. Thought doing nothing was a job. Not in a business. Gotta say, though, before Congress adjourns forever, I couldn’t have done this without him.

Social Security. Big, big change. All those people investing retirement savings in the stock market. Dow Jones over 122,000, I might add. Before, the government took your money. Made you save when you could’ve planned for your own future. Bought lottery tickets. A timeshare in Mexico. Always a reverse mortgage as an option. You never go wrong with real estate.

And to all you oldsters who traded your Social Security benefits to join our CCA-Golden Corral Retirement Clubs… You were tough negotiators! I heard Crooked Hillary called them “internment camps.” Who you gonna believe? These are exclusive memberships! Nobody else getting in. Love that buffet menu… Pot Roast. The Carrot Cake. Cage-Free Eggs.

I know, you’re thinking, why won’t he stay another four?

Because I respect the Constitution. And the Electoral College, which I won twice by big margins, record, record numbers, by the way. It’s so beautiful, it should be the Electoral University.

I will still be executive producer of “The Vote.” I want to thank personally the celebrity coaches from #TheVote_2020 who all four turned their chairs for me in the blinds—Ted Nugent, Wayne Newton, Loretta Lynn and Kanye… I’m sorry you all couldn’t have me on your team. But Kayne did a beautiful job helping me appeal to, I’m not saying the blacks, but he did. Good to have you back, my friend.

And the Legends episode, with guest coaches Henry Kissinger, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, and to be fair, Noam Chomsky. Very popular, highest-rated show of the season.

#TheVote_2024 will be an even more tremendous, one-hundred-percent success, with coaches Sara Palin, Omarosa, Ann Coulter, and to be fair, George Lakoff. Some good candidates will audition, I’m sure.

Ivanka hasn’t told me her plans. I ask her her plans, she says, “Dad! The blind trust.” So even I can’t wait to watch.

And no more voter fraud, thanks to the new registration requirements.

Now all you need is a Real ID Twitter account and a mobile streaming data plan. Then watch the show each Monday on Fox, 7pm Central, 9 Pacific, not available in selected markets.

Voting starts next week, and remember, your vote is multiplied five times for every dollar spent at NRA.com, WWE.com, Cato.com or Gazprom.ru.

The day Washington announced a deal to end the federal government shutdown, I was at the preschool reading Green Eggs and Ham.

Five times in a row.

I watched the video of Sen. Ted Cruz during his grandstanding filibuster. He read the Dr. Seuss classic competently but in the manner of a man all too pleased with himself. After all, he's a father reading to children who are supposed to settle down go to sleep.

No surprise that I prefer my rendition. It's delivered to kids we are trying to awaken.

The boy I read for, let's call him Jamarcus, was on his first day in the preschool. Kids whose families have just moved into the shelter are often like he was—restless, anxious, trying to comfort themselves. All of us took turns applying our various calming strategies to get him to sleep during nap time.

None of it worked.

While I was with him, he squirmed, crossed and recrossed his legs, and rubbed his gums and sucked his fingers, working them in and out of his mouth. His teeth, I noticed, were tiny for his age and widely gapped.

He wasn't misbehaving or loud, just not resting. He whispered to me, nearly an hour after he first went down on his cot, "I can get up in two minutes."

No, I said, you can get up in 65 minutes.

Five minutes, he countered, and then began counting under his breath: 25, 26, 27, 28, 29... 25, 26, 27, 28, 29...

Finally, after more than an hour and a half of wakeful naptime, a teacher asked if I'd take Jamarcus to the library and read to him. He selected a book, and we sat together in a childsized love seat.

My version of the reading tends toward the dramatic. The characters have voices—the entire story is told in dialogue, after all—and they speak in a manner that shows their disgust, impatience, humor and obstinance. During their opposition they develop a relationship.

After the first run-through, he asked to hear it again. And again. Why do you want to hear it again? It's funny, he said.

Later, he went to the shelves and picked out three more Dr. Seuss titles from the hundred or so haphazardly arranged books. It wasn't until he brought a fifth book to our pile that I figured out how he inerrantly plucked them seeing only the thin spines. It was a Berenstain Bears adventure that also had the Cat in the Hat symbol on the spine.

Various commentators have remarked on Sen. Cruz's selection of Green Eggs and Ham as completely missing the point of the story, given his ultimate purpose was to defund the health care law. He's also come up short on some of the skills we try to build in preschool, what the training calls Executive Function.

Executive function skills encourage children to control their impuses, listen, make predictions, problem solve or recall past events and relate them to the present.

Jamarcus certainly has the capacity to develop these skills. But not everyone, even the well-educated, are able to exercise them.

Our playground at the shelter is pretty Darwinian and the preschoolers love to play.

I am regularly in pursuit of kids who turn themselves into broccoli in order to attract a broccoli-eating monster, and I have a steady line of those who want to be rock-a-bye-babied in order to have their cradle F-A-L-L-L-L from the treetops.

Today, I was also busy giving shoulder rides while simultaneously snapping monkeys off the playground equipment.

One time when the alligator came around, two girls were in a dispute over whose turn it was to get snapped. One insisted the other had slipped in front of her while I was away. The other denied it.

I had a hunch who was telling the truth, but being more than just a playground alligator I told them: I don't know who to believe and I don't like it when people lie to me. So you two work it out between yourselves who should go first. Until you do, nobody gets snapped.

I went on with the shoulder rides. Twice, I came back.

Have you worked it out?

Yes, said one. No, said the other.

I'm not going to tell you what to do. You have to figure it out yourselves, I said.

The third time I came, they had settled the disagreement. What did you do, I asked.

I said, I'm sorry, said one girl. I said, I'm sorry, said the other.

SNAP! SNAP!

No more monkeys sitting in the tree.

I came upon two boys fighting.

What happened, I asked. (I never count on getting a straight story.)

He hit me, cried one boy.

Why did you hit him, I asked.

Because he was going to hit me, the boy said.

That isn't a reason to hit someone. Use your words instead. We don't hit on this playground. And don't expect a shoulder ride if you hit people.

What do those Sergeants at Arms do at the capitols, anyway? I think they should come by for training.

We had a full house of 20 kids in the preschool today. About five children are preparing to enter kindergarten and had some outside classroom work in the morning. There was also a session for their parents helping to orient them to kindergarten and to know what to expect when their child starts school.

I suppose for people who've never visited a homeless shelter, the image is about cots or bunk beds and free meals instead of support programs to help families get back on their feet. Here at People Serving People, the walls and elevators are papered with announcements about programs to help residents find work, prepare for interviews, take classes, develop techniques to deal with stress, tutoring kids, improve parenting skills, etc.

Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.

Follow the link if you want more background. Obama's offer of a waiver to states on welfare requirements means states can try new ways to get people back to work without the states losing their federal funding. Governors have to request the waiver, and some GOP governors have already asked for more flexibility of this sort. Obama himself won't change anything; the state must have a plan to get people off welfare and into jobs sooner.

Romney's statement is what used to be called a lie. The media are reluctant call out lies, so they're even less likely to point out why the lie's being floated. It's all about resurrecting the mythical welfare queens of the Reagan era and stirring up resentment of the poor.

If conservative voters really understood what's left of welfare after the reforms of 1996, they might be more supportive of the program. If they saw the programs available in our shelter, they'd see how they contribute to more stable families and better outcomes for kids.

But the discourse isn't even close to that level.

For example, did you know a family of three in Minnesota has to earn less than $12,804 (all data from 2007) to qualify for "welfare" cash assistance? And if they earned the maximum and raked in every eligible dollar for a full year, at best, they'd still only have just over $19,000 to live on.

Of just under 67,000 total recipients in the state, 26% were adults. Of the remaining 74% who were children, nearly half were kids who did not have a parent receiving benefits.

Yet read Romney's statement again. It's not only wrong about the job training; it's misleading about who is actually getting that welfare check.

I don't know how many of the kids I work with receive Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, but I do know any little welfare princesses in my classroom won't be on it for long. There's a 60 month lifetime limit on their families receiving federally funded benefits.

Rain and a full room of kids (16), some of them new this week, made today's preschool classroom more challenging than usual. The regular teachers knew it was coming. You could hear it when the lead teacher walked the kids through the day's calendar call and response.

"Today is Thursday." Thursday!

"Yesterday was Wednesday." Wednesday!

"Tomorrow is Friday." FRIDAY!!!!

The teachers' voices gave Friday the extra oomph.

With a bunch of new three-year-olds in class, the room has a fresh power imbalance. The younger kids don't know the norms and are more likely to resort to hitting and crying to make up for lack of size and knowing how to get along with others. Many of the kids are coming fresh out of stressful circumstances, and their acting out may be effective in the rest of their lives, so why wouldn't they try it here?

Today, my work focused on avoiding bloodshed, quieting tears without caving into tantrums, and encouraging sharing among kids who didn't see why they should give up anything.

By now, you should see the parallels between my roomful of homeless kids on a rainy day and the last month at the State Capitol.

All morning, I worked with "J," who would go into a rage whenever another child tried to join him at the chalkboard or at play. Whether his impulsiveness came from being selfish, fear or simply a different drumbeat doesn't matter. We have to maintain equilibrium in the class for all the kids' benefits, and each child must learn how to cooperate and deal with conflict.

Eventually, we succeeded at a game where the kids took turns shooting a ball through the hoop of my arms. Despite all my sharing talk and stratagems, the balance finally tilted when "M" gained control of the ball and offered it to "J" instead of taking a shot himself.

Democracy only works if people can see things from two perspectives, how it affects them personally, and how it affects the society as a whole. We have to weigh out those things to make sure that we actually have shared benefits and shared costs, and that the sharing is fair. That won’t happen if we all focus jealously on benefits to other people, or greedily on the benefits to us. It won’t happen unless someone gets people to look up from their kitchen tables to see the bigger picture.

Ineptness and inefficiency bewilder and infuriate them. They’ll root it out PDQ! But they don’t see the relationships and histories that lie behind the public picture — what I like to call “the backside of the knitting.” Passive resistance may well greet their decisive action, but often it’ll have lasting consequences.

Systems in long-evolved equilibrium nearly always lose to incomers who have no stake in the equilibrium. Hence Native America lost to the Anglos and the Spanish, and hence Martha’s Vineyard continues to lose ground to well-heeled new arrivals with their minds bent on improvement.

We put grown-ups in charge of the classroom, because we're supposed to rise above the squabbles and keep focused on the best outcomes for the kids.

A dinner party last night got me thinking about the interface between political rhetoric and where people's hearts really are. Of the seven gathered at the table, two were former teachers, one taught seventh grade and a fourth worked in a high school and was also involved in its drama productions.

Despite the depths of Colorado's educational funding problems and the precariousness of teaching jobs — seen in increasingly challenging classrooms, threats of layoffs and the red tide against "public employees — the table talk didn't go there.

Instead, it focused on the kids: The hard-working ones, the medicated ADHD kids, the malingerers, the amazing ones, the autistic one, the singers and dancers and shot putters and drug users. And it was spoken with an awareness of and concern for their nutrition, upbringing, social circles, inspirations and prospects.

An ex-teacher inquired about one of his former students and whether he'd stayed out of trouble in high school. The math teacher, who taught a "gifted" class in addition to classes for kids with behavioral problems, said her gifted group was largely made of kids who might have been considered normal a generation or two ago. She also expressed mild regret that she'd passed on an opening to teach science (her specialty) because she believed science positions would be the next ones to be cut.

That's as political as it got last night.

This morning, back in the realm of daily news and conflict, I wondered how the conversation at a table of political job holders might go — say, appointees who rode the coattails of November's victory and are now intent on shaving government down to size as they collect nice paychecks and enjoy benefits just like other public employees. Would their undirected talk focus on the people they serve — all of them — or toward the advance of power and the progress of their unmaking government?

I don't know for sure, but this framework comes to mind as way to imagine it.

Let's say we can derive satisfaction from four dimensions of work: the work itself, the people we serve, the compensation we receive, and the control we can achieve. All are forms of reward, and the greatest theoretical reward comes from achieving satisfaction in all four dimensions. In reality, there are variations, overlaps and exceptions, but let's keep this simple.

Those who enjoy the work itself can include writers, programmers, scientists, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs and others who don't necessarily require other people to enrich what is already a rich interior experience. The work can be primarily mental or physical; it's the activity itself that gives pleasure.

Others may primarily derive satisfaction from serving others. Let's include teachers, ministers, health professionals, restauranteurs, certain salespeople and various social service professionals.

Then there are the managers and financial types who could be equally at home in banking, consumer electronics, taco franchising, insurance or the cake mix business. They need other people, but primarily as abstractions — "human resources," "consumers" and "shareholders" — necessary to the system that provides their financial gain.

The fourth dimension certainly overlaps with the others, but the control sought by a composer or a farmer is very different from that sought by the political and business classes, which must exert power over others to achieve their goals. And one of the levers of their power comes from characterizing and mischaracterizing others.

Of course, people aren't this simple, but these categories provide a framework for seeing through motivations as well as self-deceptions.

This blog is still on hiatus, but I wanted to file this report, given the posturing during the election season about how big government is doing too much for the poor that they could do for themselves.

For example, I heard on MPR from a woman who said health care isn't a right any more than it's a right to own a Mercedes or a BMW. The poor should just suck it up and drive their Fords and eat hot dogs instead ofdriving Beemers and eating steak.

As if access to health care were not a question, but just a matter of selecting a level of status and comfort. She clearly has no idea what life is like when a car of any model is not an option, and the choice isn't eating a hot dog instead of a steak. It's skipping meals entirely in order to pay for health care.

The preschool where I volunteer is run by a non-profit that receives significant funding and services from Hennepin County. It's a pretty good model for how government and the charitable sector can collaborate to help address homelessness in our community.

The kids have come to the shelter because, for one reason or another, their families have lost their housing. For many of them, the stress of moving from one place to another has been a prominent feature in their young lives.

When I talked to a girl we'll call Shante about how I rode my bike in to see her today, she told me she had a bike, too: "It's in storage."

Today, the kids had a lesson about being afraid and how to deal with their fears. The teacher used a puppet named Mousie to talk to them about it.

When she brought out Mousie, she asked, "Do you know who this is?"

One boy correctly answered, "It's a rat."

Mousie has a long, hairless tail and the body of a rat. I don't know how this four-year-old knew Mousie was actually a rat, but I doubt he learned it from a book.

Mousie got scared when the kids talked too loudly or growled to scare her. She trembled and chewed her tail. The teacher asked if the children were ever afraid and trembled like Mousie.

Some of the kids said they had. Others — all boys — said they weren't ever afraid. These unafraid kids exhibited the most problems dealing with frustration, acting appropriately, responding to teacher requests, etc.

I'm not sure what anti-big-government and anti-welfare folks have in mind when they preach private sector-solutions and personal responsibility. But I don't think the kids in my homeless shelter preschool class are anywhere near their radar.

A local GOP candidate for the Colorado House got pulled over Saturday night and cited for being in possession of a handgun and under the influence of alcohol. However, the officer did not ticket David Cox for driving under the influence. (Cox declined to take a portable breath alcohol test after the officer noted some "clues" in his actions in the roadside test.)

Either the statutes governing driving under the influence and for carrying a firearm under the influence are not clear enough, or the cop felt he couldn't make the right call and split the difference.

The guy who slipped between the two laws doesn't think it's a big deal, and he didn't plan to hire a lawyer because he didn't think prosecutors could make it stick. (He was right; charges were dropped today.)

“I thought the whole thing was kind of humorous,” [Cox] said.

Cox has been issued summons or arrested four times dating back to 1999,
all alcohol-related. He seems to think he's exonerated because he was stopped hours after he last consumed alcohol; no matter he was driving before and had the loaded gun in his vehicle then, too.

Quite a charmer.

*****

Another article says Grand Junction (64%) and Mesa County (63%) have higher than average (national is 60%) response rates to the U.S. Census. Aspen is only at 30%.

Why is Aspen so low? Likely, the very high proportion of second (and fourth and fifth) homes and low incidence of affordable housing in the community.

Hardly anybody actually lives in a place like that.

*****

I did locate the homeless vet who was burned out of his camp last week. I should've known how he would spend Easter weekend with no money and no desire to go to shelter.

I see the Tea Party Express III is hitting Grand Junction Wednesday morning. This event, we are told, is the real Tea Party deal, not a bogus one like some of the others being organized in the valley. (It is the same caravan landing in Minnesota April 6th, the day before the GOP-sponsored Sarah Palin-Michele Bachmann rally.)

Normally, I'd be all over it. Last year's local
rally was a gold mine, but Wednesday is my volunteer day at the Day Center and there's something perverse about skipping out on a commitment to watch people whine about the government.

This rolling RV-fest will feature an appearances by local congressional candidateBob McConnell, a retired Army Colonel and attorney for whom "God, Country, and Family come first. Party comes second."

Aside from his trinitarian notion of who's on first, McConnell is a Tenther who believes President Obama is a socialist (at least) and "In order to recover from devastating unemployment, the federal government has to get out of the Third District of Colorado. That is the mission I intend to accomplish as a congressman."

McConnell is a relatively recent resident in the Third District. He moved to Steamboat Springs after an outfitting business he started near Colorado Springs went bust. He was working for the ski patrol when Minnesota's Michele Bachmann hit town last August to speak at The Steamboat Institute Freedom Conference.

McConnell said Bachmann "looked me right in the heart and said 'If you’re that angry, get
out and do something.'"

Getting the federal government out of Colorado's Third District? How about getting Minnesota's Sixth District Congresswoman out of the federal government, so she can do her Palin Junior act full-time?

(Digging up background on McConnell from one of the local papers served up this Bachmann ad. She's everywhere.)

Bad poetry being even less in vogue than in Nostradamus's day, the one who "looks like Nostradamus" today spouts prose soundbites hinting at insurrection, violence and treason — and claims inspiration from other obscure but widely interpreted ancient texts.

The real Nostradamus supposedly predicted the death of kings, the burning of London and the French Revolution.

Still stumped?

One difference is that the real Nostradamus didn't try to make his meanderings come true and didn't — as near as I can tell — incite others to do so.